Abstract
Understanding the effects of cognitive enhancing drugs is an important area of research. Much of the research, however, has focused on restoring memory following some sort of disruption to the brain, such as damage or injections of scopolamine. Aniracetam is a positive AMPA-receptor modulator that has shown promise for improving memory under conditions when the brain has been damaged, but its effectiveness in improving memory in neurologically healthy subjects is unclear. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of aniracetam (100mg/kg and 200 mg/kg) on short-term memory in “neurologically healthy” pigeons. Pigeons were administered aniracetam via either intramuscular injection or orally, either 30 or 60 minutes prior to testing on a delayed matching-to-sample task. Aniracetam had no effect on the pigeons’ memory performance, nor did it affect response latency. These findings add to the growing evidence that, while effective at improving memory function in models of impaired memory, aniracetam has no effect in improving memory in healthy organisms.
Highlights
Cognitive enhancing drugs are drugs that can improve memory and cognition, either by increasing attention or enhancing the mechanism by which memory occurs [1]
We examined whether aniracetam affected the subjects’ response latency to make a correct choice from the comparison stimuli
The current study failed to find an improvement in matching accuracy in healthy pigeons after treatment with one such AMPAkine, aniracetam
Summary
Cognitive enhancing drugs (nootropics) are drugs that can improve memory and cognition, either by increasing attention or enhancing the mechanism by which memory occurs [1]. A less explored avenue of research, is the effect of cognitive enhancers on healthy brains. Caffeine is a commonly used cognitive enhancer that improves wakefulness and energy [2] due to its psychostimulant properties. Other psychostimulants, such as cocaine or methylphenidate (Ritalin), have demonstrated a facilitative effect on memory-based tasks [3, 4], possibly due to increasing a subject’s ability to focus. Cognitive enhancers can target the α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptor that plays an important role in the formation of long-term potentiation [5], a purported molecular mechanism by which memory occurs.
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